This chapter begins with an outline of a mistake: an underestimation the user experience (UX) problem that emerged when the former Vice Director of Digital Engagement & Technology at the Brooklyn Museum, Shelley Bernstein, and her team attempted to iteratively develop their ASK App by releasing it as a minimal viable product (MVP). In order to address this mistake, our recommendation is that arts leaders and managers test assumptions by designing experiments that are informed by the principles of Agile Project Management and that involve collection qualitative data from users. Through doing this, arts leaders and managers can reframe such a UX problem from being considered to be a mistake, to being understood to be an opportunity to learn. We also argue in this chapter that it is a mistake to assume that agile methods cannot be used to measure the UX of art itself. In other words, it is a mistake to assume that qualitative data cannot be used to measure the intrinsic/cultural value of the arts. If leaders in this sector do not use this data to measure this type of value in a qualitative way, quantitative data will continue to primarily be used to measure instrumental value. In other words – the extent to which the arts generate economic or social benefits – and if so, the intrinsic/cultural value of art will become even more invisible. This would present a clear problem for arts leaders and managers in their attempts to articulate the fundamental purpose, artistic vision and values of the organisation they are changed to lead.
Data analysis and the arts: the mistake of ignoring the numbers
Borghini, Stefania
2021
Abstract
This chapter begins with an outline of a mistake: an underestimation the user experience (UX) problem that emerged when the former Vice Director of Digital Engagement & Technology at the Brooklyn Museum, Shelley Bernstein, and her team attempted to iteratively develop their ASK App by releasing it as a minimal viable product (MVP). In order to address this mistake, our recommendation is that arts leaders and managers test assumptions by designing experiments that are informed by the principles of Agile Project Management and that involve collection qualitative data from users. Through doing this, arts leaders and managers can reframe such a UX problem from being considered to be a mistake, to being understood to be an opportunity to learn. We also argue in this chapter that it is a mistake to assume that agile methods cannot be used to measure the UX of art itself. In other words, it is a mistake to assume that qualitative data cannot be used to measure the intrinsic/cultural value of the arts. If leaders in this sector do not use this data to measure this type of value in a qualitative way, quantitative data will continue to primarily be used to measure instrumental value. In other words – the extent to which the arts generate economic or social benefits – and if so, the intrinsic/cultural value of art will become even more invisible. This would present a clear problem for arts leaders and managers in their attempts to articulate the fundamental purpose, artistic vision and values of the organisation they are changed to lead.
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